Flying with the Thunderbolts in World War II

Scott Shaw, The Plain DealerDave Hutton, flanked by a photo of fellow members of the 66th Squadron of the 57th Fighter Group, flew P-47 fighters over Italy during World War II.

"There are no ordinary lives," said Ken Burns of those who served in a global cataclysm so momentous that the filmmaker simply entitled his 2007 documentary "The War."

Many who served in so many different ways during World War II are gone now.

Some took their stories with them.

But not this one.

By Brian Albrecht Plain Dealer Reporter

Dave Hutton roared through the cloud and flak-filled skies over Italy, gunning for "flamers."

Flamers were trucks, trains or vehicles carrying enemy supplies that exploded in a gush of fire when hit by the combined might of eight, .50-caliber machine guns tucked in the wings of Hutton's P-47 Thunderbolt fighter.

P-47s were veritable tanks of the air, nicknamed "jugs" for their ponderous size and stodgy shape.

But Hutton and other P-47 pilots loved the thick armor plating that surrounded the cockpit, the plane's heavy construction that absorbed bullets and anti-aircraft shrapnel like a steel sponge, and its ability to out-dive just about any other fighter in Europe.

Not that there were many enemy fighters still around in Italy by the time Hutton joined the 57th Fighter Group in Corsica in 1944.

Germany's earlier aircraft losses during battles in North Africa and the difficulty of supplying its air forces in Italy had nearly eliminated that possible threat to American fighters.

Fortunately, when equipped with rockets and bombs, the P-47 proved to be an outstanding air-to-ground assault aircraft; providing close support for troops on the front line when not scouring the countryside for enemy trains, convoys and other targets.

Flying with the ThunderboltsDave Hutton remembers dodging flak and attacking enemy transports as pilot of a P-47 fighter in Italy during World War II.

Flying with the ThunderboltsDave Hutton remembers dodging flak and attacking enemy transports as pilot of a P-47 fighter in Italy during World War II.

Hutton, now 87, of Hudson, was just happy to be flying -- a dream he'd had since his childhood when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races, and he built models of the champion airplanes of early aviation.

So when Hutton was called up after graduating from Shaw High School and attending Miami University for a year, he opted for the Army Air Forces.

In a sense, Hutton also was completing a mission started during World War I by his father, who trained as an aircraft gunner but was sidelined due to appendicitis when his unit went overseas to fight the Germans.

The P-47s of Hutton's squadron joined more than 15,000 produced during the war; credited with downing 3,752 enemy aircraft and destroying 86,000 railway cars, 9,000 locomotives, 68,000 trucks and 6,000 armored fighting vehicles.

All the stuff of much-desired "flamers."

"Watching them explode, that was worthwhile," Hutton recently recalled with a wistful smile of remembrance.

The biggest threat came from anti-aircraft fire, the "black flowers" of smoke and death that that blossomed in the sky around you. "It could get you coming in or going out (from a target), and small-arms fire could get you when you were right there," Hutton recalled.

He quickly learned the art of survival by evasion -- rapidly changing altitude, making turns, doing everything you could to throw off the aim of ground gunners.

But there were many other ways to die.

Hutton recalled that he first faced the grim realities of war when he and other new pilots arrived in Corsica and started learning how to fly the P-47s. Hutton and a close friend, Bob Bittner, went aloft in separate training groups.

Hutton recalled that as he headed back to the field, he saw a plane burning at the end of the runway. "I had a sick feeling about that, so when I landed I asked, 'Who was killed?' They said it was one of the new pilots, Bob Bittner. He stalled out on landing. And that, my friend, was my introduction to war.

"Poor Bob never even got to fly one mission."

Then there was the guy from Dayton who bailed out of his crippled aircraft, drifted into an Italian town, smashed against the side of a building and was killed instantly.

Casualties. "Yeah, we had quite a few," Hutton mused, rubbing a hand quickly across his face. "Too many."

Hutton nearly became one himself when he flew a mission through the Brenner Pass, in the Italian Alps bordering Austria. "Yeah, I almost hit a mountain one time," he explained.

The Germans had started hiding trucks under road arches to elude attack from the air. "So I decided we were going to strafe 'em," Hutton said.

"I was trying to get a flamer -- it didn't count as a kill unless you got a flamer -- and I concentrated so much on that, that all of a sudden I see I'm only about 10 feet from the side of the mountain," he added. "I got out of it, but that was the closest I've come to anything like that."

Hutton noted that when the Germans stashed trains in tunnels, again to escape the P-47s, his unit perfected the technique of skipping their bombs to either end of a tunnel, effectively sealing the trains inside the mountain.

He flew 106 missions, some of them in P-47 No. 74 with the name "War Weary" painted on its fuselage. "The guy before me named it and I figured heck, it's appropriate, so I just kept it," Hutton said.

When the war ended he returned home and graduated from Miami University with a degree in business administration. After a stint at U.S. Steel, he started his own business, the Great Lakes Supply Co., which he ran for 20 years before working as an industrial safety consultant, retiring in 1987. He and his second wife, Jo, have been married 22 years and have five children.

The memories linger, but the flamers of yore have long since sputtered out.

Rarely are war stories told when he and other pilots gather for the annual 57th Fighter Group reunions.

"Initially, everybody had a story to tell," Hutton said. "As the years go by, we talk less and less about what we did, probably because we've gone over everything we've wanted to. But we still have a good time."

For a while Hutton continued flying after the war, piloting small private aircraft, mostly for business.

"It wasn't the same," he said. "All the rules and regulations they have now. When I was in the service, we didn't have those. We could fly under bridges if we wanted to."

Though the stories have been told, the flights flown, one thing endures.

A mission accomplished.

"It was a patriotic sort of thing at that time, just a feeling, I guess, that everybody had," Hutton said. "We felt that the United States was in serious trouble, and Germany could take over the world unless they were stopped.